Most commercial airplanes today have storage bins positioned on the inside of the aircraft passenger compartments above the outboard passenger seats. The storage bins typically have hinged doors or are pivoting bins and are utilized to store luggage and other carry-on items of the passengers. The storage bins positioned adjacent to the sidewalls of the airplane are called the outboard storage (or “stowage”) bins, while the storage bins positioned internally in the passenger compartment, for example, on twin aisle airliners, are called the inboard/center storage/stowage bins.
With airplanes, the fuselage narrows as it approaches the front and rear of the airplane resulting in non-constant cross-sectional areas of the cabins. In the passenger compartments of these airplanes, where the constant section bin rows end, typically the bin rows are angled forward and aft to follow the walls of the tapering fuselage. Often, the transitions between the rows of bins in the constant cross-sectional cabin areas and the fore or aft non-constant cross-sectional areas are abrupt and sharply angled. These transition areas can lose space, are not aesthetically pleasing, and require additional wedge or pie shaped components, as well as possible seals, to span and close out the space between the adjacent angled bin rows. This approach adds additional, unnecessary parts and often creates difficult and time-consuming alignments and installation issues.
The adjacent ceiling and ceiling light valance architecture are directly impacted by this angled transition. Current practice with these elements is to just miter them (abrupt transition), which leaves an architecturally abrupt appearance.